In both posts I raised another question, a question of “how” we go about our mission of making disciples across the street and around the world, and then I put it off until later. Today I want to begin to answer that question. I say begin, because this will really be a question with many answers; too many answers to fit in one post.

A Common Mission Strategy

While First Church has three separate worshiping communities, each with their own identity, we remain one church. We are “one church with multiple expressions.” We accomplish this by existing as one church with the same mission, values, ministry strategy, administrative leadership, and Wesleyan theology.

We’ve already discussed our common mission: to make disciples across the street and around the world. Our common ministry strategy describes how we go about making disciples and looks at it as a process with three components:

Worship – individual and corporate

Grow – in small group settings for study, personal sharing, guidance, and prayer

It is through them that we go about the mission of making disciples, whether we are speaking of ourselves as current members of the church, or whether we are speaking about those outside the church.

This particular series on the blog is devoted primarily to that last component “Serve,” whether we are talking about missions or service (we’ll discuss whether they are different in another post). It’s important to remember however that while it’s easy to think and talk about them separately and even to make ministry plans as if they were different things, none of these three components is mutually exclusive. When we “worship” we are growing personally and corporately while serving both God and each other. When we “grow” we should do so as an act of worship and service. When we “serve” we should be worshiping and growing. The moment we break the link between these components we fail in our task of Christian discipleship.

We’ll look at how these three components work together and whether they form a path to discipleship in our next post. For now, take some time to reflect on how you engage in “Worship – Grow – Serve” and whether you look at them as distinct ideas or actions, or whether for you they blend together. In either case, how has that impacted your own discipleship process, and how has it impacted the way you’ve helped to disciple others?